July 8, 2008

“Every few weeks [Jo March] would shut herself up in her room, put on her scribbling suit, and `fall into a vortex’, as she expressed it, writing away at her novel with all her heart and soul …. [Her] cap was a beacon to the inquiring eyes of her family, who during these periods kept their distance, merely popping in their heads semi-occasionally to ask, with interest, ‘Does genius burn, Jo?’ … If this expressive article of dress was drawn low upon the forehead, it was a sign that hard work was going on, in exciting moments it was pushed rakishly askew, and when despair seized the author it was plucked wholly off, and cast upon the floor. At such times the intruder silently withdrew, and not until the red bow was seen gaily erect upon the gifted brow, did anyone dare address Jo.”

— Little Women, Louisa May Alcott

“Genius doesn’t work on an assembly line basis. … You can’t simply say, ‘Today I will be brilliant.’ ”